The other day I discussed how Rosen Publishing had sneaked ancient astronaut beliefs into school libraries through the publication of an anthology of fringe history articles aimed at a high school readership, including a contribution from convicted child molester Frank Joseph. But at least that steaming pile of worthless literature was confined to the libraries of schools that bought it, where presumably students would have to seek it out. I was deeply disturbed to read in Slate magazine yesterday that some charter schools in Texas, which are public schools, are using strange claims about history in their curricula and actually teaching it in the classroom.

Slate focused, understandably, on creationism, the biggest threat to science education, which was more than evident in the charter curricula and materials it reviewed. This included one curriculum that until recently taught that the Loch Ness Monster was real in order to call evolution into question. However, since I am not a biologist, my interest was piqued by the weird history claims that are also being taught in Texas schools. Slate reviewed the Responsive Ed curriculum, one used by the secular arm of a religious curriculum provider run by a creationist. Responsive Ed takes religious curricula and removes explicit references to religion. Responsive Ed teaches its students that “anti-Christian bias” was responsible for World War I and the breakdown of the divine right of kings: “[T]he abandoning of religious standards of conduct and the breakdown in respect for governmental authority would lead to one of two options: either anarchy or dictatorship would prevail in the absence of a monarch.” But what really takes the cake is Founders Classical Academy in Lewisville, Texas, a Responsive Ed school, uses the right-wing Patriot’s History of the United States (2004) by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen as its U.S. history textbook. This is a book endorsed by both Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh This is how the book begins:

Is America’s past a tale of racism, sexism, and bigotry? Is it the story of the conquest and rape of a continent? Is U.S. history the story of white slave owners who perverted the electoral process for their own interests? Did America start with Columbus’s killing all the Indians, leap to Jim Crow laws and Rockefeller crushing the workers, then finally save itself with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal? The answers, of course, are no, no, no, and NO. One might never know this, however, by looking at almost any mainstream U.S. history textbook. Having taught American history in one form or another for close to sixty years between us, we are aware that, unfortunately, many students are berated with tales of the Founders as self-interested politicians and slaveholders, of the icons of American industry as robber-baron oppressors, and of every American foreign policy initiative as imperialistic and insensitive. At least Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States honestly represents its Marxist biases in the title!

The authors then “reject” the approach of “academics” (sound familiar?) and “left-wing historians,” who “assume that ideas don’t matter,” so the authors can declare that America’s history is a “shining light” based on personal “virtue,” by which they heavily imply Christian religion. I am not unsympathetic to the criticism that mainstream history is obsessed with issues of race, class, and gender to the exclusion of all else—but this book is a wretched bit of propaganda, so dripping with partisan polemic (whole pages are devoted to excoriating hated “liberal” academics) that it is simply offensive that anyone could teach it as a straightforward history of America.

Since I’m not particularly interested in modern history, I’m going to take a look at the section on early exploration, just as I previously did with the parallel section of Howard Zinn’s People’s History. The first chapter begins by explaining that European powers were motivated as much by the need to bring the Gospel to the pagans as by the potential for capital gain, both, of course, being virtues since God and money are so closely entwined (Matthew 6:24). It then states that the Vikings were the first Europeans to discover America, sometime around 1000, at Vinland, but that its “historical impact was minimal.” This, at least, is correct.The authors go on to state that voyages of discovery became possible because European monarchs had consolidated their kingdoms into “cohesive” dynastic states, which I’m not sure would accurately describe the uneasy union of Aragon and Castile, which remained politically independent despite passing under the name of Spain. They further state that the Protestant Reformation after 1517 spurred colonization as England and Spain acted out of fear that the other would convert new peoples to the wrong religion. This seems to be prima facie false since Spain and Portugal had colonized big chunks of Africa and the Americas prior to the Protestant Reformation, and the biggest colonial dispute of the era was between those two powers, adjudicated by no less a Catholic figure than the Pope, who gave Portugal everything east of Brazil and Spain everything west. The authors describe Columbus as having undertaken his voyage of discovery in order to Christianize the people of Asia, and they claim that “only a few merchants, explorers, and dreamers” took interest in Columbus’s discoveries. This would seem at odds with the fact that as far abroad as Turkey the cartographer Piri Reis included Columbus’s material in his world map of 1513, testifying to the rapid diffusion of knowledge of the New World across the Old beyond merely a “few” merchants and dreamers. But, overall, this early section is not too far from mainstream facts. Then things get a little wonky. In describing the conquest of Mexico, the authors claim that the Spanish encountered “powerful Indians called Aztecs,” which is not true since the name Aztec was invented by Baron Alexander von Humboldt in 1810. The Aztec called themselves Mexica, but the Europeans of the 1800s didn’t want modern Mexicans to feel a connection to pre-Conquest peoples. The authors further castigate the Aztecs for brutality and for running a “monstrously” large city with rigid class segregation, as though the Spanish were not equally devoted to preserving the distinction between nobility and commoner. Let us not mince words. The Aztecs had some of the bloodiest sacrifices in all of world history, but the exact number of sacrifices is not known. The authors take Spanish accounts of Aztec sacrifices uncritically at face value, and they report that the Aztec sacrificed fourteen prisoners per minute for days at a time during festivals. The authors state that Cortes achieved a “stunning” victory over the “murderous mass of Aztecs” because each Castilian soldier had a “sense of individual rights, civic duty, and personal freedom nonexistent in the Aztec kingdom.” These were also non-existent back home in Spain, where subjects owed fealty to their sovereign and lords; where civic duty was obedience to God, king, and lord; and where, let us not forget, the sovereign received automatic pro forma rubberstamp approval of all acts from the Cortes, and—oh, yeah—the Inquisition was busy upholding the “individual rights” of non-Catholics to convert or leave. The authors then claim that Europeans emphasized “group cohesion of free citizens,” which made them both tactically and morally superior to disorganized native peoples. They claim that most native peoples “lived off the land” while Europeans had “industrial” power that freed them from subsistence concerns. So who do they think was living the “monstrously” large city of Tenochtitlan, and who was feeding them? Where did they think “industrial” power came from before the Industrial Revolution? They then claim that Spain—and indeed all Europe—at the time had “the legal framework of republicanism and civic virtue” that allowed their forces to continue on while the monarchical natives gave up as soon as their chief was slain. I imagine Emperor Charles V (who was also King Carlos I of Spain) would be quite surprised to learn that he presided over a republic, or the Iroquois to learn that their semi-democratic Confederacy was really an absolute monarchy in disguise. A sub-section discusses whether Columbus was responsible for genocide, comparing “the intrepid voyager’s courage and vision” to “anti-Columbus groups” who begrudge “the establishment of European civilization in the New World.” They assert that as few as 1.8 million Native Americans (whom they call “Indians”) lived in North America in 1491 (despite also claiming that “hordes” of hundreds of thousands of Aztecs attacked Cortes), and they deny that European-borne diseases caused a population collapse. They purposely bounce back and forth between North America above the Rio Grande and the Americas in general in order to confuse the numbers and minimize the population crash that followed Contact by restricting the inquiry solely to North America, which had a sparser population than the cities south of the Rio Grande. That said, there is genuine controversy over the size of the Native population in 1491, but no serious historian doubts, as these authors seem to do (though not consistently), that European contact had a significant and damaging effect on Native peoples. The scholarly consensus is that as many as 90% of Native people died as a result of Contact. Advocates of high and low estimates have accused the other side bias against Native Americans or Western Civilization respectively. More specifically, the authors claim, citing Betty Meggers, that the Conquistadors’ estimates of Native populations were exaggerated, which might well be true, except that the authors just finished telling us that they accepted without question the Conquistadors’ reports of Aztec sacrifices in all their exaggerated numbers. In their view, the structure of the Aztec hegemony was the real force allowing the Conquest since the Aztecs were so highly centralized that the Spanish merely took over for them, so that the common man merely “exchanged of group of despots for another.” This grossly oversimplifies the complex structure of Aztec hegemony, which, unlike the Inca Empire, was not an absolute monarchy but a federated system of alliances. They also blame the Natives for dying off from their own native diseases. Citing the climate-driven population collapse of the Great Basin in the 1200s and 1300s, they assert that Native populations were already in decline in the 1400s. In their view, Native Americans were doomed to die no matter what, and at best Europe merely accelerated the process. They conclude the section by again mixing North America with Latin America when convenient for their views. They describe the emergence of the mestizo class in Mexico through the intermarriage of Spaniards and Natives, whose major achievement, they say, was adopting European culture. At no time in this discussion of first contact do they present even a moment’s consideration of the Native peoples from their own perspective, seeing them only in terms of their role in the European narrative. For the authors, Native peoples were, in short, bloodthirsty, authoritarian warrior-monsters who nonetheless were also a sickly, miniscule race of primitives doomed to extinction. Strangely, this was also the view of many historians in the early 1800s, during the run-up to the Removal Act. The Patriot’s History version of the Conquest is just as horrible as Howard Zinn’s, but from a completely opposing point of view. Neither one should be used as a school text book.

Hi Jason, to be honest, they are reinforcing a ghetto mentality with their approach and they are content to do so. No matter how I look at it, I find their view presumably attempting to advocate American Exceptionalism backtracks down the rabbit hole and devolves into another version of cultural aesthetic. Depending on what kind of history we are talking about, reflexivity may be par for the course and I don't want to bash pluralism by mistake, but it seems to me they are drawing large brush strokes to make sociology more palatable. Never have I seen such fear of pluralism expressed in so reflexive a way.

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Shane Sullivan

1/17/2014 07:48:27 am

"The authors further castigate the Aztecs for brutality and for running a ... city with rigid class segregation"

RLewis, I believe it is very possible that Templars may have explored and marked-up positions here in the Upper Midwest, in MN and SD, respectively. Yet, I am not bat-shit crazy. It may be bat-shit crazy to ignore this very possibility.

Stoneholes are possibly associated with Templars in Europe, as Wolter has shown, and these same stoneholes are found in abundance in two especially identifiable spots in this region.

This is always a problem for me, when one wants to cast the KRS and the Knights Templar, and the notion of medieval pre-Columbus activity, into the same category as, say, Burrows Cave nonsense, yet folks come here and try this all the time.

Bat-shit crazy is a bad way to describe people who think the Templars may have had medieval influence in America. This is the snarking we have been talking about. Those who believe in commonly held fringe ideas should not be automatically castigated, RLewis. Try to reserve such snarking for those doing harm, not for those merely entertaining innocent alternative views. You are helping to set the tone here, as well as Jason. Maybe you could try to be a bit more generous.

Of course the Templars decided to travel to North America (which was undiscovered at the time) without leaving a single trace in historical records.Just like Alexander Helios,who according to Scott Wolter,also traveled to North America with an entourage of 5000 & sought refuge in a cave located in the Grand Canyon.Again I wont even address the "technicality" of a transatlantic journey to North America, because scholars have already done the job extensively,but another charlatan,Richard Hoagland, pretends he has photographic evidences of a German Panzer on Mars:
http://tinyurl.com/yl3mosa
and a Nike sneaker & a model plane lying around in Gale crater:
http://tinyurl.com/ls2hxy7
Do you also expect us to take this lunatic seriously?.
You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig.

Only Me

1/17/2014 06:54:33 pm

Nice links, Tara.

The alleged "Panzer"...isn't this pareidolia? Or is it something else?

The "Nike shoe and model airplane"...the plane looks to be just another oddly shaped rock to me, and I get the impression the "shoe" is Photoshopped. It's the only object with a highly defined shadow and just looks like an added detail. Of course, it could also be another oddly shaped rock, too.

Discovery of America

1/18/2014 01:33:50 am

Gunn Sinclair commented:
" Yet, I am not bat-shit crazy"

That's because you're a fan of the Kensington Rune Stone rubbish

Discovery of America

1/18/2014 01:36:08 am

Gunn Sinclair commented:
"As long as humans are involved in the selection process, there will be clumsy mistakes"

Bingo! That's why the pseudo-history of Rosslyn Chapel exists

RLewis

1/18/2014 03:05:47 am

KRS and stone holes. KRS and stone holes. Presenting a theory is not the same as presenting evidence Just as with Oak Island, Bigfoot, Goddess Worship in DC, UFOs, Moon-Builders, Hidden Egyptian Treasures, Giants - the evidence for Templar exploration has been explained with much more reasonable theories multiple times.

Yet it never stops.

I find it very frustrating and hence I feel these ridiculous claims merit ridiculous comments. You always have the option to skip over my comments (that's what I usually do).

Historical records. Thanks for not going berserk on me for earlier comments, Tara. It seems like you are learning to bite your tongue, yet again, this seems not to be the case. In any event, I must apologize for trying to ring your bell, as I was checked in my spirit about this. I had tried to point out your inconsistencies as a "ring girl," but I could've just bit my own tongue. Anyway, for what that's worth.

Well, there were the duo concealments that haven't helped matters much, as far as having historical records dealing with Templars. I'm talking about the perceived need for secrecy, and the plague of the mid-Fourteenth century, which wiped out a considerable number of the existing population. Bad mix, secrecy and Black Death.

I look at stoneholes as historical records, just as one can easily see the KRS as a message in stone, a historical record. Most everyone here wants to disclaim the KRS and stoneholes, or add unwarranted meanings, but this is a mistake. The scientific community is in the slow process of changing their views. Scoffers will grow quiet, mostly without apology.

The fools like this "discovery of America" charge in with their one-liners, like they are proclaiming the final judgment, yet they are actually uneducated and overly-cynical, to the point of being a pesky pest. That's the lipstick on the pig, the pig being a false interpretation of the meaning of the KRS...and stoneholes, too, for that matter since they are linked by some kind of ideology, if not by an exact time-frame.

Unfortunately, I need to put up with the pests who come here to pester, as I attempt to enlighten those who are open-minded on the subject. Yes, I am basing my beliefs and assumptions on the KRS being genuine, and it having been left in MN by actual humans during the medieval time-frame. The evidence is all around me up here, but it is my job to convince people that the evidences represent "a preponderance of the evidence," not by provenance, but by merely existing, and not in a sterile setting.

People have tried, but cannot explain away the many stoneholes up here. Clearly, blasting is not the answer. What an insult to Scandinavian farmers, that they would be so stupid as to carve all these holes and then forget to blast them. I have gone out of my way to show that these stoneholes simply represent the attempted carving up of the landscape for future development, which never happened.

The stakes were put in the ground, so to speak, but all plans collapsed. We see the evidence of expeditions. We see that medieval peoples tried to make a go of it where the two far inland waterways from the ocean converges, in nearby SD. It is there, waiting to be further explained, to be further explored by future archaeologists.

New Gotaland is coming into view through the early morning fog, like how Brigadoon came into view. But Brigadoon was only imaginary; my recently discovered "New Gotaland" is a real, physical place on earth, and not that far away. Who wants to take my hand and go there for a visit? (I'll have to check for you, first, Jason...no guarantees.)

Gunn

1/17/2014 07:58:03 am

This goes to show that good history text books don't automatically float to the top like cream on milk. As long as humans are involved in the selection process, there will be clumsy mistakes, and some purposefully ignorant decisions being made along the way, caused by uneducated people being allowed to make title choices.

Sometimes bias and favoritism enter the picture, sideways, so that the general public doesn't even know what is being taught. We want to teach our children well. Text books that explore both creationism and evolution side-by-side are good, so that both common views are analyzed, and neither view is under-represented. My own belief system enables both viewpoints to come together, for instance.

But what Jason seems to be exposing here, in this case, is a jarring compilation of history inaccuracies and misrepresentations, which are being thrown at our children like mud.

Again, as always, truth-in-history is the standard to follow. If speculation is being considered, it should be based on at least a "common fringe view" if such a consideration can be found. For example, Egyptians in the Grand Canyon is ludicrous, while the Newport Tower is a valid structure to speculate about, even for students.

I would encourage Jason to follow through with his research by sending a communication to the offending Charter School, letting it know of the poor choice it made, and why, which has everything to do with a fair and truthful and balanced approach to history. I'm not talking about political correctness and stiffness. Speculation and debate should be encouraged.

Also here, and without rancor.

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Mandalore

1/17/2014 11:19:57 am

Young Earth Creationists share a great deal in common with fringe historians and conspiracy theorists. They're hatred of academics and questionable use of evidence make them natural allies. The big problem I have is when they try to force their ideas on others.

If anyone wants a good introduction to Young Earth Creation theories, with links to others, check out conservapedia.com. Kinda scary. Plus, that site has world and American history lectures for anyone to read. And you can take tests on the material and have them graded! If you go there, also check out their articles on feminism, homosexuality, and 'professor values'.

I'm remained how the view that most people thought the earth was flat was an invention of the author Washington Irving, most folks as far back as Greece and Egypt knew the earth was round.

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Gunn

1/17/2014 04:00:49 pm

It seems like most people, even in prehistoric times, would have looked up at the moon and thought it was probably round, and not flat. Then, finding other planets and thinking the same thing, and then thinking of earth and thinking the same thing...that the planet is round and not flat.

Many history buffs and academic investigators too, I suppose, believe the earth and places far and wide, including America, were all nicely mapped out even before medieval times...and they knew how to turn the globe into flat maps upon which navigation would be possible. In this scenario, unknown and untraveled sections of earth were mapped out, ready for exploration. Obviously, much of this mapping would be held in secret. So, while some sailors thought they might accidentally sail over the edge of a flat earth, I think most realized that the oceanic waters were being contained within an encapsulated environment.

Explorations and expeditions were held in secret, similar to how some early East Coast settlements were hoping for a degree of secrecy, including the ill-fated Roanoke Colony, which was originally set up to be a "secret" future pirating location, apparently.

We may be collectively too careful when it comes to estimating knowledge held by people at certain times. For example, I believe much more was known about the New World in medieval times than was let on. Secrets came to the powerful, and the powerful kept secrets. The KRS even, apparently, was written in a so-called "secret style" of runic writing, which is one of the reasons it has been difficult to analyze over the years.

We are becoming more aware of just what societies did and did not know in the past, as information is assessed and put into the ever-expanding fabric of acceptable history. Some innocent speculations are turned into facts along the way. Most are discarded. We keep looking. We look for places to zero-in on and then try to look closer. Newly accepted information is being added into the picture yearly.

Early mankind probably didn't think the moon was a flat disk, and it would be natural to assume that SOME people along the pathway of history would have gotten it right thinking that the earth as another planet would be round, too. I agree that our ancestors are being made to look too dumb. A politically correct flat earth was a religious convenience for a time, but I think most people already knew better. It didn't take a genius to point it out.

Mandalore

1/18/2014 01:22:00 am

The earth being round is a simple matter of observation, especially by sailors. Anyone near the sea or on ships could observe ships and land disappearing below the horizon as distances increased. Eratosthanes and other Greeks measured the circumference of the earth by measuring shadows at various points on the surface of the planet. Greeks also liked to think about people who walked upside down on the other side, antipodeans. The idea of a flat earth is a modern myth about the past, as others here have pointed out.

I have never seen any evidence of knowledge of the New World prior to ca. 1500 beyond the Icelandic sagas that were not known in the rest of Europe. Indeed, European misconception of the wider world meant that Columbus was looking for the court of the Mongol Khan, which no longer existed in the form Marco Polo described as he thought, in Asia on his voyage. Columbus himself tells us he asked after the Khan in the West Indies.

I also don't understand the purpose of keeping any supposed mapping secret.

Gunn

1/18/2014 11:21:04 am

Secret mapping represented secret power. One cannot simply set a date, like 1500, and say the maps known in existence at around that time carried all the navigational knowledge of the era. Obviously, some known mapping was held close to the breast. This is something we can assume to be true, I think. Secrets were kept in the past, as now.

Mandalore

1/18/2014 12:10:15 pm

Assumptions are not acceptable historical data. Without evidence there is no reason to think any special geographic knowledge existed. There was certainly no attempt to hide the European geographic discoveries in Africa, India, and the Far East in the 15th century. Why would the Americas be different?

The 1300s or 1400s are not the first time perhaps the idea
of keeping a trade secret away from the competition happens.
The odds are very high the Carthaginians sailed further than
the Romans did over the next 500 years, the power elite of
that city did not tell the conquering army around them everything,
i feel this is a given. They MAY have had ships survive a two
way Atlantic transit to the New World, that did not hug coastlines.
Finding proof positive for this is indeed very difficult, but if I am
asked who beat out the Vikings to North America, I have a bias...

Titus pullo

1/17/2014 12:58:47 pm

History books are always bias. The ones my kids used in public school were awful. They categorized 1870 to 1910 as one long depression when actually the USA had the greates growth opinion wages and productivity ever because prices slightly declined,,,well with sound money and increasing productivity they are supposed to. Then the Great Recession of 1920 isn't covered, todo so would ask too many questions with regards the the Great Depression. The aliens and sedition act are rarely covered nor is WWI and Wilson throwing Americans in prison for protesting against conscription. And on and on...history as taught can be bunk...

Reply

Chris

1/17/2014 01:32:29 pm

Having taught about the Aztecs/Mexica (but not done deep research on them) I did want to point out one thing I think is relevant and which you pointed out in your Zinn post but not here. The Aztecs had a very complex social system based on trade, conquest, and tribute (which you do point out here). However, the Mexica had created this empire by conquering the surrounding groups around them and bringing them under their sphere of influence. The Mexica exacted tribute from these subordinated groups (including victims for sacrifice) and exercised a degree of political control, but it was in no way a homogenous empire and many of the other groups resented Mexica rule. It was into this contentious political atmosphere that the Spanish arrived. When the Spanish made their move to conquer the Aztec Empire they exploited these divisions and recruited allies among the native peoples. Thus, it wasn't a small group of valiant and superior Spanish defeating endless hordes of Natives all by themselves, it was the Spanish utilizing large numbers of the Mexica's enemies to overthrow their hegemony in the region. The same fact is true in the conquest of the Inca Empire as well. Thus, in reality the Native people's played just as important a role in the European conquest of the Americas as the Europeans did...

Reply

Shane Sullivan

1/17/2014 03:48:18 pm

I thought of that as well. I like to point it out when I'm feeling devil's-advocate-y with the "Native Americans were cartoonishly peaceful proto-hippies until the white man arrived" crowd. What the Europeans did was reprehensible, but painting a picture of natives as uniformly innocent lambs incapable of feeling ambitions or making mistakes doesn't do them any favors; at best it makes them sound like well-behaved children, and at worst, dehumanizes them completely as they approach the aforementioned cartoon character status.

No, no. I was just agreeing with you that the proto-hippie stereotype is equally ridiculous. It actually has a sinister side since such stereotypes (promoted by some native tribes themselves) prevented the acceptance of evidence for Anasazi cannibalism because many researchers feared reporting it would limit their access to tribal lands.

Gary

1/18/2014 12:46:00 am

I was in elementary school in Texas in the 60s. This is not much different from what we were taught then. My wife had a teacher who told the class that the Indians were "extinct, like the dinosaurs".

Reply

B L

1/18/2014 02:47:40 am

"Creationism, the biggest threat to science education"....

I don't know, Jason. The extreme right has Creationism while the extreme left has Global Warming. I work closely with a local school, but as an independent businessman. I am constantly mystified as to how American high school kids as a whole today have trouble with simple math, spell atrociously, and possess the same hand writing skills the average third grader had when I went to school. I haven't heard any child talking about Creationism in the halls. However, they can and do all spout the daily global warming talking points verbatim. Creationism, while maybe not appropriate for public schools, will not have the same effect in terms of economic success and quality of life on each child that this global warming rubbish will have.

Before any readers want to respond to my "outrageous" comments, please take the time to actually look into real independent research on climate change. Keep Hollywood out of it.

Reply

J.A. Dickey

1/18/2014 11:35:25 am

i can easily label climate change as centrist or moderate as
a political bias and actually think what we are seeing as we
have new records made in terms of our weather as a mixing
of both climate change and global warming. i agree that the
less libertarian fringe right can be creationist and that there
are those on the left who are more worried and/or shrill than
Al Gore. I'd also sandwich Isaac Newton between Mr. Darrow
and Mr. Bryan if only because his Intelligent Design ideas are
halfway between Creationism and Science proper. I think our
textbooks can explore ideas and theories but should not have
a bias in favor of ideas that will keep a very bright student out
of M.I.T or Cal-Tech. Texas's textbook standards are not totally
praiseworthy, it is one thing to create a debating society format
that pits schools of thought at each other, it is another thing to
slant everything behind an unsaid agenda. i think much of the
climate change literature has its "chicken little" moments, but
if the advocates of the stringent controls are remotely correct,
we may be seeing an epoch end abruptly as a new one begins.

Dean Cain's SPIKE tv Bigfoot Bounty series has now rolled out
episode two and again i am reminded of CAPTURE on the CW.
Scott Wolter seems slightly better informed than Bobo Fay and
the contestants going for the ten million dollar reward do get a
well deserved scolding when handing to the judges a rationale
like the ones already aired on Finding Bigfoot. So far, one team
went home last week due to an utter lack of evidence and the
2nd team went home for being hunters who managed not to
find all the things that people on a learning curve ought to find.
They were thought to be no nearer to the eventual goal that may
hand someone the grand prize. This is now having an internal
politics emerge between the contestants as the judges stress
the rigorous nature of a scientific proof. I do feel that Bobo Fay's
level of competency in terms of "squatching" is enough to keep
some teams in the game, but the judges must shoot down all
unproven theories. The show is playing up the discord and has
a "pressure cooker' approach & pace. Science instead of pure
conjecture mayhap is ruling the roost at SPIKE tv most happily.

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J.A. Dickey

1/18/2014 11:45:11 am

There was a brief sweet interlude in episode 2 of Bigfoot Bounty
where one team was doing traditional 'squatch' calls as another
team proudly displayed the automated megaphoned caller that
they took along that was rather loud and could carry quite far...

Gunn

1/18/2014 11:39:37 am

I saw a recent report about how the polar bears are losing habitat due to global warming. You are saying that this is not true, and that the ice is not diminishing in an unnatural pattern? I thought this was the proof...that the ice is diminishing too quickly for it be from a natural cycle.

Well, as the oceans get higher and higher, this will be something to think about, whether or not the polar bears are they victims of human ignorance, or whether they are merely victims of cyclical circumstance. Then we can apply the experience of the polar bears to ourselves, perhaps.

I guess maybe polar bears are like the canaries in the mines, except that it won't be a breathing problem...it'll be a swimming and eating problem. For we humans, it may be a combination of devastating "natural" disasters, not the least of which will be a diminishing of available coastal habitat...not much difference than the disappearing polar bear habitat we see today.

There is time to act, but we won't act. Look at what China is doing to her people on this very day. They can't breath, like the canaries in the coal mines. Why can't we just leave the canaries and polar bears alone, right? They will try to fend for themselves, as we will when the appointed time comes, whether soon than necessary, or not.

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J.A. Dickey

1/18/2014 12:15:41 pm

Gunn, a few years back i remember reading about the idea
that the last Ice Age ended because of a meteor impact on
the sheet ice near Hudson's Bay. I've also found in a Google
search papers going into how a change in the Gulf Stream
currents brought on the Younger Dryas cold snap in a rapid
manner. There are papers on the hybrid vigor interplay that
grizzlies, polar bears and brown or black bears have that do
remind us of Darwin's finches and their distinctive beaks on
each island environment. Like the soot of 1800s London as
to the color of the moths who thrive urbanely, our poor polar
bears are being forced into the habitat zone of their near kin as
small environmental changes can have major ramifications...

Gunn

1/19/2014 04:51:34 am

Well, I guess we'll find out whether or not the environmental changes are small or not. One would think we could give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, but we probably won't. Hindsight will of course be 20/20 while we look for new ways to deal with the negative effects of climate change...which is occurring, whether by man or by nature or by both. We can debate the causes of global warming, but we'll soon enough see its worse and worse effects.

B L

1/18/2014 03:55:48 am

I'm pretty sure the usage of the term "Aztecs" for the Mexica people is not unique to right-wing text books.

Of course it isn't; I was pointing out the authors' error in stating that the Spanish encountered people who called themselves "Aztecs." It's a later term, and the sentences should have said they were people "later called" or "later known as" Aztecs.

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B L

1/18/2014 04:06:49 am

Thanks for the response, and I acknowledge and technically agree with your clarification. But, I would also point out that virtually any text book, right-wing, left-wing, or completely unbiased would probably fail this standard. No?

I wasn't criticizing them for using the word Aztec, just for the ambiguous and somewhat misleading phrasing. There's nothing wrong with calling the Aztecs by that name.

B L

1/18/2014 03:59:56 am

"The authors take Spanish accounts of Aztec sacrifices uncritically at face value." Isn't this what you do, Jason, when you review period literature to discount the theories of fringe historians.....take the accounts of original sources uncritically at face value?

I should certainly hope not. When I present period literature against fringe claims, it is usually to illustrate that the fringe historians ask us to take sources literally and then proceed to ignore those that, if taken literally, tell a different story. This is in contrast to attempting to tell the story of what really happened, which involves critical analysis of primary sources. Fringe writers pretend they are involved in critical analysis, but as I hope I have shown, they rarely have detailed knowledge of the sources they purport to examine (such as Philip Coppens on the Famine Stela).

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B L

1/18/2014 04:13:55 am

I completely agree with you and your analysis of fringe historians and their version "critical analysis". However, in this particular instance what other sources should have been referenced over the first-hand accounts of the Spanish in relation to Aztec human sacrifice? Or are you simply saying that a more balanced version should have been offered; one that better explained the indigenous peoples' culture?

In terms of the human sacrifices, the authors do not actually cite firsthand research but rather secondhand summaries. They ask for us to (a) accept the Spanish figures for sacrifices at face value as fair and objective and (b) ask us to reject Spanish estimates for Native population size as grossly exaggerated for propaganda reasons. These points are in direct conflict. The authors, who examine the evidence for population size with a variety of sources, fail to do the same for human sacrifice. One would logically expect the same level of critical thought in both instances.

B L

1/18/2014 04:30:13 am

Thank you, again, for the clarification. I would again point out that virtually any textbook would fail this test. Especially textbooks directed toward grade-schoolers where subject matter has to be condensed and simplified.

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I'm an author and editor who has published on a range of topics, including archaeology, science, and horror fiction. There's more about me in the About Jason tab.